A few months ago I picked up a fairly standard country style kitchen table. The table top needed sanding and refinishing. Now I’ve finally got around to making a bench to go with it. This is the first piece of furniture that I have made.

Its mortise and tenon throughout with old 2×3s that were left overs from when I built our chicken coop. I managed to find a design that I thought I could build with the 2×3s without having to plane them (I have limited tools).They actually looked not bad unfinished but I decided I wanted to paint it white to match the table legs. The top is some common board from home depot. I got two lengths that had knots on the ends, cut them to size to remove the knots and then edge glued them. Its attached with dowels that I countersunk and flush cut.

The hardest part was using the router to cut the tenons. I don’t have a table saw so I had to use some guesswork to get the depth right. Next time I won’t fit the joints so tightly – I had a piece crack after the dry fit, nothing major but still annoying.

The finish is 3 lots of BLO and 3 coats of poly.

Its sturdy, reasonably light for moving around and a good match to the table. Materials cost about $10.

After building a couple of fairly crude adirondack chairs and a chicken coop last year this is my first attempt at building something that required more than bashing in some screws. The wife wanted an antique coffee grinder so I picked up 2 of the mills from Penn State Ind at $11 each. The other I will make with dovetails as a present for someone. I only have a small 10×10 shed to work out of and so I recently scored a $10 craigslist woodworking bench that I fixed up and made new legs for. Added a T track and routed a circular groove out and mounted my router table. Added some T track and called it good for just now.

The biscuit joints were handcut and one of them was butchered so I filled it with a sliver and some glue paste and sawdust mix then sanded smooth as I have done before when restoring a wood floor.

I routed the top with a cove bit on each side which turned out nice and was real easy. The worst part was trying to level the joints by chisel. I need to sharpen what I have and get more practice. I also messed up on one side so bad that I had to use an offcut on the front which only fitted cross grain. Annoying but this was really a project to learn on before making the present.

The finish is 2 coats of linseed and then a coat of liseed and poly mix – the grain has come out nice but there is no hard finish but I don’t want a shiny coat.